It's time to switch to a four-day working week, say two experts

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/01/2-davos-experts-says-it-s-time-to-switch-to-a-four-day-working-week/

by joeyespo • 7 years ago

313 149 7 years ago

Causality1• 7 years ago

I would be happy just to switch to a five day 40 hour work week.

ksec• 7 years ago

Well in many places and across many industry, it would be great if we could get 5 days work week standard in the first place.

Instead, not only just tech industry in China, many are now moving more towards 996.

FabHK2• 7 years ago

where 996 is 9am to 9pm, 6 days a week.

Jack Ma, defending 996:

“To be able to work 996 is a huge bliss,” China’s richest man said. “If you want to join Alibaba, you need to be prepared to work 12 hours a day, otherwise why even bother joining.”

teknologist• 7 years ago

These characters love to bandy this around because they've done it themselves, once upon a time, to establish their companies. BUT what they fail to mention is that they had a HUGE share in those fledgling companies at that time. Potential reward was HUGE so they put in the time and effort.

Employees who join Alibaba aren't given a lick of equity these days.

dheera• 7 years ago

Jack Ma is a massive hypocrite IMO. In another speech Jack Ma said:

"Independent thinking, teamwork, care for others, these are the soft parts. Knowledge may not teach you that. That's why I think we should teach our kids sports, music, painting, art -- making sure humans are different from machines."

Yeah, the FIRST thing you need to do to do that is to end this 996 horror. 996 IS treating humans like machines. People already have kids and parents to care for; if you want them to engage in sports, music, painting, art, they need normal work hours.

tathougies• 7 years ago

“If you want to join Alibaba, you need to be prepared to work 12 hours a day, otherwise why even bother joining.”

So as someone who works neither 12 hours a day, nor 6 days a week (on paid labour at least), I agree with Jack Ma. I don't see the point in joining a company that is clear it expects this. I think that would be self defeating if you were a person like me.

filleokus• 7 years ago

Have there been largeish tests of company wide four-day work weeks in the software sector?

Here in Sweden the movement has mostly been push by the left, and for workers with lower wage/burnout/high amounts of sick leave etc. I think it's mostly been tested in the health care sector. I think it lowered the amount of sick leave, but was too expensive to keep since those type of jobs are very hard to make more productive. I.e, we always need nurses on staff at the ER, or to look after the elderly.

Most office-type work seems that it could potentially benefit from this though.

Swizec3• 7 years ago

I don't know about largeish tests, but 37signals is famous for their 4-day workweeks during summer.

https://m.signalvnoise.com/why-we-only-work-4-days-a-week-du...

thatfrenchguy• 7 years ago

That article makes it sound like they don’t go on vacation in exchange, which is a bad deal.

Americans already take pity time off.

astrobe_• 7 years ago

France has 35 hours work weeks, so that's four days and half with 8 hours a day [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35-hour_workweek

amiga_500• 7 years ago

But then my rent would drop 20% and I'd just be better off.

jowdones• 7 years ago

"The dogs bark, but the caravan goes on".

"the caravan" == employers.

wrong_variable2• 7 years ago

The idea is good in principal but its going to be gamed to death.

Some people derive satisfaction from their work !

Others don't.

Also will the pay be the same ? Call me a cynic but knowing business owners they will never accept lower hours for same pay. They will spend all their time figuring out how to game it.

All these solutions, studies seem like busy work for though leaders who have nothing better to do.

The best solution is quite simple - Universal Basic Income.

It can't be gamed as easily and by definition it costs less and gives everybody more freedom at the same time.

Normally I feel like rules that restrict freedom ( like you can ONLY work 40 hours ), you have to be skeptical.

perfunctory• 7 years ago

The same logic could be applied back in the day when 40-hour week was introduced. Yet somehow we managed. There is no reason we can't do again.

wrong_variable2• 7 years ago

I never said the introduction of 40-hour week was bad.

Its just more economically efficient to have UBI.

rq1• 7 years ago

You need to take into account the added value of productivity gains: who’s getting it?

If I have a better yield for a given task, then I will provide exactly what my employer asked me for the price we agreed. Eg. That means that if we agreed for 8h * 5d for a given task, and manage to do it in 8h * 3d, I obviously won’t work more.

At least not before discussing the share of my productivity gains added value.

Being zealous is the best way to get fooled.

Another thing, these 40h or even 35h in France won’t limit your freedom, you can obviously work more: it’s a disguised pay raise.

I think also that’s not ideal if applied uniformly. The price of some goods and services will mechanically rise, and you might end up “richer” but everything got expensive at the same time.

It should be bound to the marginal cost of production or the derivative of the price wrt quantity.

If you’re sublinear then you’re good to go. Otherwise it’s simply a no no.

Sorry if there’s some mistakes, I’m typing on my phone.

NikkiA• 7 years ago

Also will the pay be the same ?

Historically, no, in the 70s a 3 day week came with a 3 day pay.

peatmoss2• 7 years ago

I think three day weekends would be undeniably good for the health of our society and everyone living in it.

I have long (semi-jokingly) professed belief in the Church of the SubGenius. They extol the virtues of slack. I think the intended meaning of “slack” is as in “to slack off.” But I choose to believe in it as slack (i.e. spare capacity) in a system.

While some might use that extra day to slack off, plenty more would use that day to invest labors in their communities, maybe to get some exercise, maybe do some neglected repairs around the house.

I feel like in the name of efficiency, we’ve purged a lot of slack from the system, but that has left us with a lot of institutions that are at risk for catastrophic failure. For people who are stretched to their breaking point, there needs to be more slack.

drivingmenuts3• 7 years ago

In the US, if you don't work, you don't get paid, so this sounds like a recipe for disaster for most workers here. Small to medium businesses would potentially be losing 42 days a year of production (52 days - 10 days std vacation time) and that would hurt the profits that they would need to increase wages to make up for that lost day per week just for the workers. Shareholders will still expect year-over-year increase in profits, which won't happen if you're paying people who aren't working.

Where exactly is that happiness supposed to come from? Workers may be miserable, but less money equals even more misery, near as I can tell. I guess the rich will be happy.

kennywinker8• 7 years ago

1. There are very few jobs where doing them in a miserable state does not greatly reduce the quality and quantity of work you do.

2. Successful businesses are making their owners and shareholders lots of money. As an absolute worst-case scenario, every company takes a 1/5 hit to the profit they produce for their owners.

3. Point #2 means that a four-day work week would do a lot to rebalance the value of capital vs the value of labour. The balance has been tipped towards capital for far too long.

this_user• 7 years ago

Evidence suggests that having more time off increases productivity. And let's be honest, most people working 40+ hours/w are not working at 100% all the time. So one possibility is to slightly increase the working time (say by 1h) for each of the four days. That loses you half a day for work, but the increased productivity takes care of the balance. The caveat is that only works for businesses that are charging for output rather than time.

imran3740• 7 years ago

Zvi Mowshowitz put the concept of "slack" well: https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2017/09/30/slack/

close044• 7 years ago

Productivity has increased ~250% almost linearly over the past 70 years. Wages increased only ~100% (adjusted) and only until ~50 years ago, basically plateauing since then.

Going to a 4 day work week would bring the weekly productivity to the level of a 5 day week from the early 2000s while also providing a "virtual" wage increase.

I don't really see companies flocking to sign up.

peatmoss2• 7 years ago

This is a great read. I especially appreciated “Most times are ordinary. Make an ordinary effort.“

Swizec3• 7 years ago

According to the theory of constraints (on which I am expert since I read 1 graphic novel, The Goal, and 1 novel, The Phoenix Project) systems without slack become exponentially slower until no work is capable of getting done anymore.

The reason for this are statistical perturbations in stochastic events. If a task takes a worker rand(1,4) units of time you can expect them to do day/1 to day/4 tasks in the day.

You look at the worker doing day/1 tasks and you say, "Well shit, that person is slacking most of the time. Most of these tasks take 2 units, 4 is very rare". So you ask them to work harder and impose rules so they must perform day/3 number of tasks per day.

You look at your constantly busy workers and you're happy. No more slack in the system.

But your assembly line grinds to a halt. Nothing ever gets done anymore. Everyone is busy all the time. Everyone's always working. But nothing is finishing.

What gives?

Turns out any task that hits N=4 on the random curve, wreaks havoc and you fall behind. Then you have both yesterday's and today's tasks to do. You can't. The next day ... well the problem ends up growing exponentially.

Efficient systems have slack.

tetha• 7 years ago

Yup. And on top of that, my team does have slack time, but that doesn't mean we stop working when the mandatory tasks are done. We rather spend the downtime resolving time-consuming technical debt, automating some steps in the workflow. So, slack will actually make the regular tasks go faster.

sonnyblarney• 7 years ago

This is a very good bit of information, but most modern workplaces are not factory floors 'processing work items', so the analogy only goes so far.

Also, it very well could be that reducing to 4 from 5 does nothing but simply reduce the number of hours 'the factory is operating'. Surely there'd be a bonus because people might be more relaxed, but it's hard to weight that against the lost day.

For example, my local coffee shop is open 7 days a week, let's say that their staff works 5 days on, 2 off so there's a steady rate of staffers.

If they just switched to 4 on 3 off ... I'm not sure anything would materially change in terms of productivity etc. - and 'all else being equal' (i.e. demand, cost of goods, wages/hour), the staffers would simply make less money and I doubt they'd chose that.

But maybe '3/4 days' would be better in some industries than others.

isostatic2• 7 years ago

I used to work 4x10 hour days, I took the Wednesday off though - no more than two days in a row was great, and having a day off in the week while most were at work was so much more efficient

I now take 2-4 hours a day off during the day instead.

meej• 7 years ago

But I choose to believe in it as slack (i.e. spare capacity) in a system.

This is essentially how Tom DeMarco defines it in his book Slack.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123715.Slack

madspindel• 7 years ago

"In thirty years America will be a post-industrial society with a per capita income of $ 7,500. There will be only four work days a week of seven hours per day. The year will be comprised of 39 work weeks and 13 weeks of vacation. With weekends and holidays this makes 147 work days a year and 218 free days. All this within a single generation."

From The American Challenge by Jean Jacques Servan-Schreiber published in 1967. Too bad this will never happen since most managers are workaholics.

benjohnson• 7 years ago

I'm my estimation - you can almost live this way if you limit your expectations to someone from 1967 - limited food choices, single car, small home, frugal car-based vacations and heathy living.

esturk• 7 years ago

Funny you added 'healthy living' at the end. It makes you wonder why people would live beyond their means to be unhealthy.

stunt• 7 years ago

I have several Dutch friends who work four-day and don't mind a lower salary in exchange for healthy living.

imesh• 7 years ago

Two problems: I can't afford a 1967 size small home anywhere near me, nor can I also support 3 kids and a non working spouse.

FabHK2• 7 years ago

The most famous prediction along those lines surely is Keynes' essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren from 1930 [1], in which he entertained the notion that "a hundred years hence" "the economic problem may be solved", "the standard of life in progressive countries [...] will be between four and eight times as high as it is to-day", and would work "Three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week", but mainly to stave off boredom.

This inspired the book How Much Is Enough? by Keynes biographer Lord Skidelsky and his brother [2].

Keynes' essay had some non-PC parts: he feared

a nervous breakdown of the sort which is already common enough in England and the United States amongst the wives of the well-to-do classes, unfortunate women, many of them, who have been deprived by their wealth of their traditional tasks and occupations — who cannot find it sufficiently amusing, when deprived of the spur of economic necessity, to cook and clean and mend, yet are quite unable to find anything more amusing.

It also had some utopian dreams:

The love of money as a possession – as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life – will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease. All kinds of social customs and economic practices, affecting the distribution of wealth and of economic rewards and penalties, which we now maintain at all costs, however distasteful and unjust they may be in themselves, because they are tremendously useful in promoting the accumulation of capital, we shall then be free, at last, to discard. )

[1] http://www.econ.yale.edu/smith/econ116a/keynes1.pdf

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_Much_Is_Enough%3F_(book)

itamarst2• 7 years ago

You don't have to wait for society to make this happen (and in fact waiting will fail you). This is something many programmers have negotiated on their own (e.g. https://codewithoutrules.com/2019/05/09/part-time-software-d...).

More broadly this is one of many good reasons for programmers to unionize; even if salaries are high, working hours are still far too long.

ASlave2Gravity2• 7 years ago

To chime in here, I've only ever worked part-time as a programmer. I'm in the UK, so YMMV, but if you're looking for part-time programming roles (i.e. 4-day working week, what I work) just ask. A lot of places are pretty open about 4 day work weeks. Some places jeer and it's a firm no. But it's worth a stab. Generally, the atmosphere is improving and the stigma seems to be dying off.

aiisjustanif• 7 years ago

UK is almost a standard 35 hour work week anywhere. Salesforce, Tesco, Skyscanner, Google UK, almost anywhere. Why you part time at 4 days?

smsm427• 7 years ago

So you point is since programmers can negotiate preferable working conditions (which include both salaries and work schedule most of blue-collar workers can only dream of) they need unions to negotiate for them because otherwise they can't get working conditions they'd prefer, even though there's evidence they're already getting it. I think you broke my logic parser.

itamarst2• 7 years ago

1. It's much harder to negotiate early in your job.

2. Some people are less willing or able to negotiate for various reasons.

Thus, while individuals can and should negotiate for themselves, negotiating for everyone is even better.

Rapzid• 7 years ago

I think too many people are willing to take a pay cut to do this. If you believe you will be as or more productive, or that your skills and knowledge are more valuable than just your raw time, you should consider negotiating a 4 day week with no pay cut.

necovek7• 7 years ago

Since I am willing to take a pay cut, and even a pay cut per hour, here's my reasoning.

For every hour spent at work, I am not spending it on something of my own choice. Hours of my own choice are worth much more than hours of work to me, because they usually fulfill me more.

So, if I am to work couple hours a day, that's going to cost you little. The more you take from my "own" hours, the costlier they get. So, if I consider a normal work week to be 24h, anything above that costs non-proportionally more. I.e. 40h is not 40/24 more, but it's actually 24 x base_hourly_cost + 16 x own_factor x base_hourly_work, where own_factor is usually around 2, depending on how much I might like the base work.

So, in a sense, I am not taking a pay cut, I am just taking a reasonable salary for doing the work, but if someone insists on taking more of my time for little benefit to them and a lot of burden to me, it's going to cost significantly more.

ddeokbokki2• 7 years ago

Yup, went contracting for this reason. Code is a passion of my and I love that it's also my trade but I have other personal ventures I need to focus my attention on and I have absolutely no juice left in a regular 5day/40hrs engineering week.

bryanrasmussen2• 7 years ago

I can barely afford working 5 as it is, I have to level up my wages or get an extra source of income, not decrease.

isostatic2• 7 years ago

One reason housing is so expensive now compared to the 50s is that there are 10 working days per household now, and were 6 in the 50s.

With more money, the price of limited resources increases to fill the void.

If a 3 or 4 day week is mandated, there’s less for housing, it’s the same demand, the same supply, so prices have to come down.

bryanrasmussen2• 7 years ago

one reason that prices did not increase to fill the void immediately is that systems have an information lag between events, thus I expect a few years of mismatch. Furthermore some resources are going to increase in cost no matter what because external pressures - climate change - are going to drive up the costs of those resources (primarily food) no matter what.

RandomInteger4• 7 years ago

How would this affect service workers?

necovek7• 7 years ago

I've long argued for a 4-day 6-hour-day work week. I've even questioned a few potential employers about it, citing research: I've even offered to take a pay cut (per hour, i.e. hourly rate was cheaper than for 5-day 8-hour day weeks), but nobody was interested.

They would frequently say how they are not interested in "part time" work. I'd counter that this is full time work, with efficiency higher than the full time work, because people can focus on intellectually hard problems only for a short while sustainably. Sure, I can put in a couple of weeks of 12h days, but after that, I'd struggle to put in 4h days of quality, focused work (well known as burnout). Similarly, 8h days are not sustainable either, though it takes longer to burn out.

As people have noted, the extra time I get would not be spent in pyjamas watching netflix: it would be quality time with my family, working on projects and research, etc (if it wasn't for miserable pay and state of academia, I'd probably be doing research exclusively). Civilization as a whole would benefit as a result if there were more people putting their brains to problems they think matter. And as stated numerous times, even employeers would benefit.

But alas, when there's the next guy willing to submit to the "norm", it's hard to get the ball rolling.

smsm427• 7 years ago

They would frequently say how they are not interested in "part time" work. I'd counter that this is full time work, with efficiency higher than the full time work, because people can focus on intellectually hard problems only for a short while sustainably.

Is it really true? Can you prove it? I mean you can argue that, but if you're absent 20% of the time compared to other workers, is it true that your value is still the same because you're so much more productive? Maybe yes, but can you prove it to an employer? You're asking them to take a risk on supporting unfamiliar approach - which their familiar approach probably worked for them for years and they are fine with it. What do you offer them to justify taking this risk? I mean, maybe you are so spectacular that employing you is worth any risk. But naturally most people aren't that exceptional, by definition. Their experience shows 5-day weeks works great for them, how much better would be 4-day week to justify the risks?

Civilization as a whole would benefit as a result if there were more people putting their brains to problems they think matter.

Is there any proof that there's significant marginal increase compared to thousands of existing research institutions that have tens of thousands of very smart people already spending years attacking practically every important problem? Would amateurs spending one day a week on side projects significantly change the picture here - and offset the above-mentioned professionals not spending one day a week on their area of expertise (instead doing their hobbies in turn)? I am not sure this is that obvious.

necovek7• 7 years ago

Pretty good questions, thanks.

It's generally accepted that longer work hours decrease cognitive performance (see eg. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2727184/), but the base is usually 40h a week.

It's hard for me to prove the first point in relation to me personally: basically, I've done an experiment where I've worked mostly 6h days (still 5 days a week) and have been consistently rated higher than my coworkers at a software company with pretty good developers overall. OTOH, when I worked usual 8h days, I mostly compared as average. But that's me comparing myself to others and in distinct time periods with different projects and opportunities, and different life circumstances. For an actual proof, I'd need to compare myself with shorter work week to myself with a longer work week, working on the same projects at roughly the same time and similar external circumstances.

So, it is certainly anecdotal, and I am aware of that.

However, in a similar vein, they don't have proof that 5-day weeks work well for them. They just "work" for them because that's the law in most places and they never tried anything else. Actual proof would require a number of long-running experiments, so it's pretty much out of the question for any one company.

As for the second point, my experience and opinion of research institutions is not as high as yours. What you get in academia are ~5% of very smart people very much interested in the subject, another ~15% of very smart people not very much interested in the subject matter, and the rest who simply went with the flow. I've tried to find data for "best in class postdoc student retention", but nothing turned up, so I can't back up my out-of-my-behind numbers with anything. Other than adding that if you look at most research papers, a lot of it is simply bull (i.e. not research at all or just one thing repeated ad-nauseam with slight modifications, for the purpose of getting appropriate academic points to keep grants and funding going).

You might also note that I've argued for a shorter work day as well, thus allowing for significantly more non-work work to be done by amateurs than just 1 day per week.

If the premise of increased productivity for shorter work weeks applies to research work as well (can't find any study on this in particular), then we'd see no drop in their productivity, and only an increase on whatever we get from amateur work.

But, for now, these are mostly "thought experiments", and surely not "science". It's mostly a simplistic, idealized view of where the civilization should go, and it's hard to prove benefits either way.

rabidrat• 7 years ago

I've done a 4-day work-week, and I was at least as productive, and definitely happier. I found myself screwing around less at work, because I had less time and there were things I needed to get done. And then, when I was really engaged in the project I had at work, I had enough slack that I was able to 'over'-produce for a short while (4-6 weeks), which was not sustainable but I didn't care because I loved it. When I'm working 5 days a week, it doesn't leave room for that kind of love; I spend my too-short weekends recharging and begrudging that I don't have enough time for the things I really want to do.

phyzome• 7 years ago

Is it really true? Can you prove it?

Let me flip this around: Employers are terrible at measuring productivity of certain kinds of knowledge workers, so they just try to squeeze as many hours out of us as possible to compensate.

losvedir• 7 years ago

People argue it here all the time but I'm certainly skeptical. The hardest intellectual work of my life, my undergrad at MIT, I spent far more than 8 hours a day, 4 days a week on. The idea that all the undergrads there burning the midnight oil are just being foolish and don't they know they could get all their work done in less time doesn't pass the smell test for me.

NewsAware• 7 years ago

I am VP engineering in a 100 person company with 30 engineers. Noone is asked to work more than 40 hours and <5% do actually work more. I will happily have someone work 4 days 8 hours and 30% of our devs are in such a model. But I would not go below this (especially not less than 4 days in the office). Devs aren't working in total isolation, but are heavily involved in their cross functional product teams. Reducing availability further has an above linear hit on team productivity as colleagues become more and more blocked in their own tasks.

So: just saying this is more complex than looking at increased per-hour productivity of a single person

necovek7• 7 years ago

Sure, though a solution is simple: just have everyone work the same shorter hours :)

I've actually worked in primarily remote company, and the challenges there are even greater: no offices, hand-offs and hand-overs have to be well documented or you are wasting time, timezone differences, discussing architectural documents over video and voice calls...

Basically, I wasn't asking for full flexibility in choosing one's hours: I think that's harder (for all the reasons you bring up) than just shortening the hours.

Freak_NL3• 7 years ago

especially not less than 4 days in the office

Why? Remote work is a thing. If your processes demand having people on premises all the time, your processes may need improving. If a programmer want to work one day from home to cut down on their commute and be able to focus on a task, why would you want them in the office unless they aren't trustworthy? For colleagues to break his concentration when they need him?

Meetings can be scheduled, work coordination can be done electronically, and you surely have something like Mattermost or Slack set up?

bmsleight_• 7 years ago

I am in a not too dissimilar position to yourself (role/team size). I am working 4 days one week, 5 days the next (90% hours). It work out to be a nice compromise. The cross functional does not take too much of a hit, but the boost in productivity (IMHO) is still present.

I have some push back about the arrangement from people two or three links away from me and my team output and I have not got metrics to prove that this is effective.

Do you have any push back about your devs - 4 days 8 hours and 30% ? Do you have any other evidence/metrics for the benefits ?

loosetypes• 7 years ago

"... 12h days, ..."

I recently read Sebastian Junger's Tribe, which had many memorable takeaways for me.

One, in particular, was the assertion that, historically, subsistence farmers and the like generally only needed to work, on average, 12 hours per week.

While I know modern farming practices require copious amounts of work, it is nonetheless an interesting idea.

Imagine all the remaining time to just sit in sun or socialize.

Progress, what is that?

SomeOldThrow• 7 years ago

One, in particular, was the assertion that, historically, subsistence farmers and the like generally only needed to work, on average, 12 hours per week.

I’ve seen this claim before, and it typically revolves around careful definition of the word “work” rather than any fundamental difference in how we structure activities and priorities. iirc altering the definition to “any work that provides utility” puts the time at 30-40 hours a week. Still very much for a 30 hour/ 4 day work week, but I’ve found that particular argument to be very weak.

Granted, the west never seems to count reproductive labor when talking about work, which is itself a problem. Most Americans spend the vast majority of their waking hours in some form of labor.

PunchTornado• 7 years ago

the extra time I get would not be spent in pyjamas watching netflix: it would be quality time with my family

why would it matter where the extra time goes. you're saying that caring for your kids is more important than a single guy working at the gym or watching netflix. everyone has his priorities and none are more important than others.

necovek7• 7 years ago

You are right: I should have not been so judgemental. Watching netflix might be a net win for someone because of their improved mental state (relaxation, self satisfaction, maybe even education, hobby or as you point out, whatever...). For me it's not, but I understand people do differ.

amelius• 7 years ago

Good news, except we've justed started a trade war with China.

hobo_mark• 7 years ago

European here. This summer I'm taking all Fridays off until October (since I had too many holidays left). Yesterday was the second time, I still showed up in the office but just worked on my own projects all day (it's allowed). Once I was in the flow, I've been doing the same on Saturdays (like today) and Sundays (albeit shorter hours). I'm definitely making more progress than when I was only working on it at night, try it if you have the opportunity (and no kids/spouses of course).

sakisv• 7 years ago

It's kind of disheartening to read things like this on one hand and on the other hand read news that Austria "increased the flexibility" of the working pattern by bumping up the limit of what is considered legal to 12 hours: http://www.mondaq.com/Austria/x/733020/employee+rights+labou...

Given that this is a country which is in the EU I'm very much worried about this being adopted by more countries and becoming the norm, all in the spirit of maintaining our "competitiveness"

asdf21• 7 years ago

What issue do you have with people working three twelve hour days?

mto• 7 years ago

I work 25 hours a week remotely as freelancer (although I'm available in slack more or less all the time) and earn nearly twice as much as during my PhD. Only that in more than 3 years I never really got into demotivated/frustrated phases. During my PhD I often felt depressed when sitting in the office all day, never getting a bit of daylight... And paying 300€ a month to have someone walk my dog.

I have lots of time for learning new stuff and also teach a course twice a year at a local college for some extra cash.

Started when my daughter was born and never stopped ;). Couldn't be happier and I really hope I can somehow keep it that way.

neilv2• 7 years ago

That would work for some kinds of work.

But I live to work, and often work 7 days.

I can't imagine doing a project with delivery time pressure (like a startup trying to execute in a timely manner), working only 4 days, with a 3-day gap.

I'd rather have flexible hours, and an emphasis on working sharp in the hours we do put in -- not have frequent 3-day interruptions of project mental space, and putting off gratification in seeing the project come together.

stevesimmons• 7 years ago

Me too. I feel very lucky to have found a company that is a perfect fit for my skills and interests, and that is at the right stage that me working hard now will make a big difference.

I can't imagine not working 6-7 days a week.

Apocryphon3• 7 years ago

That's great for the both of you. But workaholics shouldn't get to dictate the norms for the rest of humanity.

vermilingua• 7 years ago

I’m sure this is great for some people, but what about casual workers? What about people that rely on overtime to get by? I can only see this pushing employers into further reducing hours, screwing those people.

coldtea• 7 years ago

We shouldn't optimize society based on the needs of "people that rely on overtime to get by", we should optimize so that people don't have to rely on overtime to get by.

It's like someone was asking back in the day: "Abolishing child labor? What about all those 10 and 12 year olds that depend on their job to eat?"

epaulson• 7 years ago

We should all aim for 4 days as the ideal instead of 5, but we should also drop the M-F work, S-S weekend ideal too. For large chunks of the workforce they're already working something other than M-F anyway because we want 7 day coverage of our retail and service sectors. More professionals - dentists and veterinarians and insurance offices and you name it - should be open on the "weekend" or should not all dentists need to share the same "weekend", especially if we're dropping down to a 4-on, 3-off standard.

If for no other reason, we build a lot of infrastructure for "peak" usage, like rush hour traffic. If we all have the same 3 day weekend that means we have lower "weekend" traffic one more day but the peaks stay the same, but if we better distributed our weekends, overall peak would go down a bit.

It's a whole new set of coordination problems, of course, but we don't all go to church on Sundays anymore, we don't all need to be off the same day.

david-gpu• 7 years ago

I get what you are saying, but presumably weekends still exist because families and friends want to do group activities at a time when all are available. If you have children younger than 12 or so you need to be available when they are not in school.

kennywinker8• 7 years ago

If you have children of working age they are likely working service industry jobs and work weekends and evenings anyways.

b0rsuk2• 7 years ago

I agree. State-enforced Monday-Friday is just bad. In Poland they pretend it's about the employees, while in reality it's the government throwing a bone to the Church. Polish Church is heavily engaged in politics. But to limit employee abuse (rampant in Poland), the working days would have to be fixed in the contract. Plenty of people want to get something done on weekends when they have the most free time, but can't. Someone who is not a catholic would likely have no objections to working on Sunday.

kwhitefoot2• 7 years ago

we don't all go to church on Sundays anymore,

Church has nothing to do with it.

we don't all need to be off the same day.

True enough except that you won't stop making a racket. I, and most other people I know, want a day when it is quiet, no rush and bustle, no noisy traffic, no noisy diy. Where I live it is normal to not mow the lawn or do any construction work outside the house on a Sunday and not do do any noisy work inside either if the neighbours could hear it.

Why on earth should an insurance office be open at the weekend? Come to think of it: why does such a thing even exist. I have not visited a bricks and mortar office to arrange insurance in the last forty years, I don't think they do exist here any more (Norway). Same for banks. And if I have a dental emergency then I go to the emergency dentist, otherwise I ask my usual dentist for an appointment during the week.

mycall• 7 years ago

I would love to but a 10 hour day would increase my time stuck in traffic 50%, so I would actually lose free time overall.

wsc981• 7 years ago

In The Netherlands /a lot/ of people work 4-day workweeks already [0]. It's not that novel. But it'd be good if more countries could largely make the switch.

Due to the progressive tax in The Netherlands, working 5 days instead of 4 doesn't earn /that/ much more money and if you have toddlers, you will spend a day less for daycare, a day extra with your kids and probably have more time for the fun things in life as well.

As a salaried employee I often chose a 4-day workweek as well when living in The Netherlands. But once I started freelancing, the 5-day workweek seemed the better choice for me. As freelancer you are taxed a bit less compared to a salaried employee, so there's more incentive to make as much money as possible during the workweek.

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[0] https://www.equaltimes.org/a-four-day-work-week-is-only-a#.X...

Freak_NL3• 7 years ago

At my small (Dutch) company the standard contract is 36 hours, so most employees work 4 × 8. I have a four month old son, and my wife normally works 4 × 8 as well, but she does 3 × 8 + 4 until we find our bearings with the young one.

That means two days of daycare (partly subsidized by the government), one day, each, at home with the child, and one day where she works from home for four hours.

This is fairly typical for white collar workers in the Netherlands. Four days is more than enough for me.

frankbreetz• 7 years ago

There us nothing to disagree with here, but I feel like America is so far to the right that an idea like this will be answered with "people are so lazy" and "you signed a contract" or something similarly ridiculous. My response to all this is wasn't the goal of our forefathers to give us a better life? Doesn't that mean less hours working? Even if my parents grew up in the best economic period of the past thousand years, shouldn't my life be marginally better then their's? Maybe I am a "wuss" compared to the people who stormed Normandy, but maybe those people are wusses compared to medival people, and those people are wusses compared to cavemen, shouldn't you want to create the type of world where your wuss children can survive?

daodedickinson• 7 years ago

The problem is there are so many over-demand jobs and under-demand jobs because schools stole so many billions from students learning information that could not be put to fruitful use. And those jobs are so unequal in how much work they take. So you have many jobs or situations where people are paid to sit and many like in medicine where more people might die if you want to sleep a healthy amount. The time should fit the job. But the pay should fit the time, and then that's the next problem to sove, and on.

deevolution• 7 years ago

How do I go about convincing my company to give me a 4 day work week? Will I need to sacrifice part of my wage?

b0rsuk2• 7 years ago

Working as a programmer, I already started de facto shortening my shifts without cheating on my employer: on 7th, and especially 8th hour, I don't write new code anymore unless it's in places I have very solid understanding of. My mind tends to slow down in the final hours, and it takes a lot of effort to come up with something new, and my bug rate increases.

What do I do instead? Binge read documentation to learn about new functions and parameters that may make my work easier. Tweak vim configuration. Experiment with new shell commands. Clean up my email inbox and various notifications.

These activities still push the work forward, but don't require as much creative juice and there's no consequence for mistake.

I would still prefer a 4 day week, but it's the next best thing.

jlawson• 7 years ago

I do this too.

Same principle applies in the gym - you start out the workout with the super strenuous squats and deadlifts, then move to the difficult bench press and dips, then finish with relatively easy bicep curls, tricep pushdown, and cardio.

Some things just can't be done effectively unless you're above a certain level of rest; other things can be done even if you're tired. It just makes sense to sort things into the period of time where you can actually do them.

In coding this extends all the way to watching lightweight YouTube videos about coding late at night when you're tired.

stmfreak• 7 years ago

I have been trying to work from home one day per week and wish we could standardize on this. It would reduce traffic 20%. It saves everyone a round trip commute and that is time that can be put to productive use. I also appreciate having a solid day of few meetings.

Four day work week would be fine, but I suspect people would just cram more meetings in and it may become less productive.

SteveGerencser• 7 years ago

My dad ran his factory this way from day one. I forget exactly when they started, late 80s I think, and they always worked 4 10 hour days, Monday thru Thursday, 3 day weekend. Worked great when they went to 2 shifts as well. 4 hour a day downtime for maintenance to do their magic each day.

Employees loved it, management loved it, the only ones that complained were some of their very large customers, and even they got used to it after a year of not being able to reach anyone on Friday.

disconnection• 7 years ago

From my own research, I would say that 4 days is still too much in many cases: http://www.disconnectionist.com/blog/becoming-a-part-time-su...

SubiculumCode• 7 years ago

I submit that the problem is the denominator: 7

The ratios:

5|2. Just right and too little

4|3. Too little and just right

Weeks should be 8 days

5|3. Just right and just right.

7 has nothing to do with human health and happiness. Why stick with that week length dogma?

8 days a week, thr Beatles had it right.

johnmarinelli• 7 years ago

A few months ago, I requested a 32 hour work week at my job. I took the appropriate paycut (I'm a single bachelor that doesn't spend much anyway). Instead of a 4-day workweek, I do ~6.5 hours for 5 days. It's been great and I couldn't recommend it more.

edit - I should add that I started the job at 40 hours/week, and after 1 year of being there I asked for 32 hours/week.

tempodox• 7 years ago

Critically, they also say workers were 20% more productive.

So, there wouldn't even be an actual loss in productivity. Still I predict this recommendation will fall on deaf ears. The problem is not economic or rational, it's cultural and religious. “Society” still adheres to the notion that a person's worth is largely determined by the extent of their economic activities (independent of productivity, obviously). Working less is perceived as a dangerous moral failure (“Idle hands are the devil's workshop”, in christian cultures).

purplezooey• 7 years ago

The worst part of this is that it will, like most everything else in the US, be an option for the wealthy, some white collar workers and those fortunate enough to live in California while leaving everyone else behind.

throwaway82137• 7 years ago

Data point from BigCo: almost no-one (at a US BigCo) would take reduced hours for proportionally less pay.

I work at a silicon valley BigCo, and I work half-time (20 hrs per week). I got this by just asking for it, though it did require high up approval. I didn't even hide the fact that it was for the purpose of personal projects. I get half my salary, and half my stock and bonus. It is still more than plenty to afford living here for me. I have 1 kid.

I've done this for 5 years now, during which time I've spoken to many BigCo colleagues about this, and I'd estimate about 100 of them know my "deal", and so far no-one has followed my path. Note that 80% and 60% are also options.

When asked they uniformly say that they couldn't take the reduction in pay. Median total comp for these people is easily 300k. Some don't even have kids.

So no, if you want to improve society you'd have to force a 4-day work week by law, otherwise no-one will follow-thru.

ppcelery• 7 years ago

we are switching to a six-day working week, in china...

triplee• 7 years ago

I've been saying this for years, so I'm glad I agree with the experts.

xtrimsky1234• 7 years ago

Would be only great if my kids stay in school 5 days a week. Otherwise it will be just another day I need to entertain my kids. Sure 3 day weekends for traveling would be great, but I already do that with PTOs.

I want 6 hour work days 5 times a week. Not 4 work days. And banks being closed an extra day would just be annoying. (not that I go to a physical bank, but just transfers and such).

chemmail• 7 years ago

I've been doing 4 day work weeks and its like i'm on vacation all the time. We need this.

It's time to switch to a four-day working week, say two experts

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